6 XI. also that the same degree of interference might be CHAP. dangerous to the Porte, when exercised by so power ful an empire as Russia on behalf of ten millions of Greeks, and innocent in the case of Austria, whose 'influence, derivable from religious sympathy, was confined to a small number of Catholics, including her own subjects. These remarks were surely not ambiguous; but it seems probable that Prince Mentschikoff, misled by his previous impression as to what Lord Stratford really objected to, may have imagined that the proposed convention in its altered form would not be violently disapproved by the English Ambassador. At all events, he seems to have instructed his Government to that effect. On the 19th of April the Russian Ambassador addressed his remonstrances and his demands to the Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs in the form of a diplomatic Note. In the first sentence of this singular document Prince Mentschikoff tells the Minister for Foreign Affairs that he must have seen the duplicity of his predecessor.' In the next he tells him he must be 'convinced of the extent to which the respect due to the Emperor had been disre garded, and how great was his magnanimity in offering to the Porte the means of escaping from the embarrassments occasioned to it by the bad faith of its Ministers;' and then, after more objurgation in the same strain, and after dealing in a peremptory way with the question of the Holy Places, the Note goes on to declare that 'in conse *Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 156. СНАР. quence of the hostile tendencies manifested for some years past in whatever related to Russia, she required ' in behalf of the religious communities of the Orthodox Church an explanatory and positive act of guarantee.' Then the Note requested that the Ottoman Cabinet would be pleased in its wisdom to weigh the serious nature of the offence which it had committed, and compare it with the moderation of the demands made for reparation and guarantee, which a consider'ation of legitimate defence might have put forward 'at greater length and in more peremptory terms.' Finally the Note stated that 'the reply of the Minister 'for Foreign Affairs would indicate to the Ambassador the ulterior duties which he would have to discharge;' and intimated that those duties would be 'consistent with the dignity of the Government which he repre'sented, and of the religion professed by his Sovereign.* It might have been politic for Prince Mentschikoff to send such a Note as this in the midst of the panic which followed his landing in the early days of March, but it was vain to send it now. The Turks had returned to their old allegiance. They could take their rest, for they knew that Lord Stratford watched. Him they feared, him they trusted, him they obeyed. It was in vain now that the Prince sought to crush the will of the Sultan and of his Ministers. Whether he threatened, or whether he tried to cajole; whether he sent his dragoman with angry messages to the Porte, or whether he went thither in person; whether he urged the members of *Eastern Papers,' part i. p. 158. XI. the Government in private interviews, or whether CHAP. he obtained audience of the Sultan, he always encountered the same firmness, the same courteous deference, and, above all, that same terrible moderation which, day by day and hour by hour, was putting him more and more in the wrong. The voice which spoke to him might be the voice of the Grand Vizier, or the voice of the Reis Effendi, or the voice of the Sultan himself; but the mind which he was really encountering was always the mind of one man. Far from quailing under the threatening tone of the Note, the Turkish Government now determined to enter into no convention with Russia, and to reject Prince Mentschikoff's proposals respecting the protection of the Greek Church in Turkey. The Grand Vizier and the Reis Effendi calmly consulted Lord Stratford as to the manner in which they should give effect to the decision of the Cabinet, and Lord Stratford, now placed at ease by the settlement of the question of the Holy Places, contentedly prepared to encounter the next expected moves of Prince Mentschikoff.* Rage of the Czar on finding himself en by Lord In strife for ascendancy like that which was now going on between the Czar and Lord Stratford, the pain of undergoing defeat is of such a kind that the countered pangs of the sufferer accumulate; and far from being Stratford. assuaged by time, they are every day less easy to bear than they were the day before. By the pomp and the declared significance of Prince Mentschi * 24th April. Ibid. p. 160. The settlement of the question of the Holy Places was on the 22d. XI. CHAP. koff's mission, the Emperor Nicholas had drawn upon himself the eyes of Europe, and the presence of the religious ingredient had brought him under the gaze of many millions of his own subjects who were not commonly observers of the business of the State. And he who, in transactions thus watched by men, was preparing for him cruel discomfiture-he who kept him on the rack, and regulated his torments with cold unrelenting precision-was the old familiar enemy whom he had once refused to receive as the English Ambassador at St Petersburg. People who knew the springs of action in the Russian capital used to say at that time that the whole Eastern Question,' as it was called, lay enclosed in one name-lay enclosed in the name of Lord Stratford. They acknowledged that the Emperor Nicholas could not bear the stress of our Ambassador's authority with the Porte. And, in truth, the Czar's power of endurance was drawing to a close. He wavered and wavered again and again. He was versed in business of state, and it would seem that when his mind was turned to things temporal he truly meant to be politic and just. But in his more religious moments he was furious. Even for Nicholas the Czar it was all but impossible to endure the Ambassador's political ascendancy; but the bare thought of Lord Stratford's protecting Christianity in Turkey was more than could be borne by Nicholas the Pontiff. Men not jesting approached him with stories that the Ambassador had determined to bring over the Sultan to the Church of England. XI. His brain was not strong enough to be safe against CHAP. rumours like that. He almost came to feel that the Englishman, who seemed to be endued with strange powers of compulsion always used for the support of Moslem dominion and for curbing the orthodox Russo-Greek Church, was a being in his nature Satanic, and that resistance to him was as much a duty (and was a duty as thickly beset with practical difficulties) as resistance to the great enemy of mankind. Maddened at last by this singular kind of torment, the Czar broke loose from the restraints of policy, and was even so void of counsel that, having determined to do violence to the Sultan, he did not take the common care of giving to his action any semblance of consistency with public law. upon the tion. The despatches framed under the orders of a Its effect monarch in this condition of mind reached Prince negotiaMentschikoff in the beginning of May. Breathing fresh anger and enjoining haste, they fiercely drove him on. They urged him to an almost instantaneous rupture, without giving him a standing-ground for his quarrel. Yet at this time the condition of things was of such a kind that a good cause, nay even a specious grievance, would have helped Prince Mentschikoff better than the advance of the 4th and 5th corps, or the patrolling of Dannenburg's cavalry. koff's diffi In truth, what now befell the Russian Ambassador Mentschiwas this :—He found himself placed under the com- culty. pulsion of violent instructions at a time when all ground for just resentment was wanting. He could obey his orders, and force on a rupture; but he could |